‘Avoid dad jokes, be natural’: How to win a TV debate

With the first head-to-head leaders’ debate on Tuesday evening – and others to follow, people will be watching to see what difference it makes to the campaign.

Election debates feel like they have been around forever, but they are a relatively new thing in the UK.

There is no rule that says they have to take place, but whichever party leader is behind in the polls will invariably challenge the frontrunner to a live head-to-head.

And no politician in an election campaign wants to be accused of running scared. The template was set at the first debate in 2010….

“I agree with Nick!”

It became the one of the catchphrases that would define the campaign.

That election saw the first ever televised TV debate between the then three main party leaders, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, his Tory challenger David Cameron, and the Lib Dems’ Nick Clegg.

The self-styled outsider seemed most at ease at the podium, looking down the barrel of the camera and appealing directly to the viewers.

His message: “I believe the way things are, are not the way things have to be” and a number of his arguments, the other two leaders agreed with.

But it didn’t do him much good. The Lib Dems lost seats in the election, despite their leader’s favourable personal ratings.

The positive coverage frustrated David Cameron though, says his former director of communications, Sir Craig Oliver. And that is why David Cameron – now Lord Cameron, Foreign Secretary – minimised the number of debates he did in 2015.

Sir Craig says a lead in the polls is like a Ming vase, precious and fragile, and the debate, a polished floor the leader must carry it across.

“Everyone wants to have election debates apart from the people who are in the lead. And although they say they want them, in reality they are trying to protect their lead.”

Theresa May did not take part in any TV debates in the 2017 election. The then-PM went on to lose her Conservative majority in the House of Commons.